Ahead of their clash with England we look at ten things you may not know about the former Soviet state.
Ten things you may not know about the former Soviet state
Ahead of their World Cup clash with England at Wembley on Saturday we look at ten things you may not know about the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan.
1 The former Soviet state's football team is ranked 131st by Fifa, sandwiched between Hong Kong and Singapore. Countries such as Haiti, Ethiopia and New Caledonia are ranked higher. The Kazakhs' ranking peaked at 98th in 2001.
2 Irtysh Pavlodar have been the most successful club since independence, winning the championship, known since last year as the Kazakhstan Premier League, five times since 1993. The current champions are FC Aktobe.
3 Kazakhstan's first international match was in 1992 when they beat central Asian neighbours Turkmenistan 1-0.
4 Dutchman Arno Pijpers was sacked as the team's head coach following last month's home defeat by Ukraine and replaced by German Bernd Storck, who is also manager of FC Almaty in the domestic league.
5 Kazakhstan covers an area the size of western Europe but has a population of just 15.5million - roughly the same as Beijing. By size, it is the planet's ninth largest country.
6 Nursultan Abish-uly Nazarbayev remains president after claiming 90 per cent of the votes in a disputed 2005 election - the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe described it as seriously flawed - to win another seven-year term. He has been president since 1990.
7 An abundance of natural resources, including oil, and rich agricultural land mean Kazakhstan's economy is bigger than those of its Central Asian neighbours combined. Per capita GDP last year was US dollars 11,000 (£6,300) compared to 35,000 (£19,900) in Britain.
8 Almaty was the capital city until December 1998 when it transferred to smaller Astana (population 600,000).
9 The Astana Team, sponsored by a group of state-owned Kazakh companies, withdrew from the 2007 Tour de France in the wake of a positive drugs test given by leading rider Alexander Vinokourov. Seven-time winner Lance Armstrong will race for the team in next year's Tour following his decision to come out of retirement.
10 A boom in gambling fuelled by the country's new oil wealth led to a heavy clampdown last year. Before gambling was restricted to new resorts outside Almaty and Astana, the country had as many casinos as the USA, despite having a population a 20th of the size.
